Chapter 1: Beginning of the End

Spring came and went and it was now June. Tsuri took a seat on the beach outside of her home in Okinawa. The corner of the island that she lived on had slow tides in the early weeks of summer, lucky for Tsuri since she loved to sit on the beach with her sword and look at the clear water.

“Stop daydreaming. Your father says that the tour’s gonna start soon and that you need to get back to the house.” said Emiko, Tsuri’s close friend.

“Y-yeah-” Tsuri stuttered.

Tsuri, who generally hated being around other people, had to watch as a group of high schoolers, around her age, toured her home, a place she considered sacred. This was a travesty, but she couldn’t disobey her father. Disrespecting your elders in her family, one of Japan’s oldest, was considered a great offense more so than other Japanese families. So Tsuri swallowed her pride and obliged.

* * *

Kawasuki Seshita was considered an outcast by his school and he just never seemed to take anything seriously. Life was a joke to him, and he was the comedian who would tell that joke. He was still disappointed that he couldn’t bring his prized Colt Government to the island to get some target practice.

“At least the swordsmen might be cool.” Kawasuki thought to himself.

His class was on a field trip to Okinawa, one of their stops was at a dojo for a group of swordsmen.

Kawasuki sighed, and pulled out a photo from his backpack. It was one he always had with him, one of him with his parents and his older brother, Harashi. He liked to look at it, it gave him comfort.

It had been almost two full years since Harashi was murdered in a gang related shooting. The police never caught the murderers or found the body. Kawasuki didn’t care what happened to the people who murdered his brother, they were going to die in the end anyways whether by gang violence or natural causes. The thought of this made Kawasuki give a little chuckle. The fact that no matter what they did their lives would eventually end was truly funny to him.

“What’s up Seshita?” said Hinata, one of Kawasuki’s classmates who was sitting next to him on the boat.

“You look so down, you’re usually the only one to be smiling a majority of the time.”

“Eh, it’s nothing, I’m probably seasick.” Kawasuki responded

“Well, we’re gonna be there in ten minutes so you better get over it quick.”

Kawasuki was glad to have someone like Hinata there with him. He was one of the very few people at his high school that was nice to him. He enjoyed having something that resembled a friend. But what did he care if he didn’t have friends? Nothing mattered to him after all.

“Alright, I know all of you are excited and you’re a little bit rowdy today,” said Mr. Honda, Kawasuki’s teacher, “but I still expect all of you to be respectful everywhere we visit, especially the dojo.”

Kawasuki’s mind was still wandering, thinking about his brother and the other things in the back of his mind.

“Especially you Seshita!” Mr. Honda said in a stern voice. “If you mess up this trip, I’m going to have your ass suspended!”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Kawasuki responded.

With that said, the class hopped on a bus and proceeded to head over to their first stop, the swordsman dojo.

* * *

Tsuri sneered, she was truly annoyed.

“Father, must these outsiders come into our domain? I thought that only a select few were to enter our dojo.” Tsuri questioned.

“For centuries, our clan was shrouded in shadows” Tsuri’s father said. “But as of recent time, we have become more and more lenient. The outside world deserves to see our talent with the blade, some may even fear us.”

“Yeah, lighten up” Emiko said

“I just think it’s not right for them to witness our art. Very few people are even accepted as students. The only reason Emiko was accepted was because of her potential to learn our techniques.”

“Tsuri,” her father said, “if it will make you feel better, think of it as our way of showing that we are superior to all of them. We’re not Japan’s secret weapon anymore, this isn’t ancient times. There is no reason to hide in the shadows.”

“But father-” Tsuri began to say,“So be it, I oblige. I will be fine with guests entering our home”

“Great! Both of you grab your swords and inform the other students to grab theirs. We must prepare the demonstration.” Tsuri’s father said.

* * *

Kawasuki wondered why people still learned how to use swords.

“It’s just such an outdated and impractical weapon now,” he thought to himself.

So why did Harashi like them so much?

Harashi loved swords, it was one of his favorite things in the whole world. Kawasuki never got why his brother loved them. He wanted to be superior to his brother, so he had his grandfather, who was a police officer, teach him how to use a gun.

“The gun’s always mightier than the sword!” Kawasuki would often say to his brother.

Sometimes they would use a BB gun and a wooden sword to settle their argument. But somehow, Harashi’s reaction time was too quick, Kawasuki was no match for him.

“Hey, Seshita,” said Hinata. “Are you sure you’re okay? You’ve seemed off today.”

“I’m one hundred percent sure that I’m fine, I’m just really tired today.” Kawasuki responded.

“If you say so, lemme know if you need anything.”

After a short ride on the bus, the class had arrived at the dojo where they had the privilege of seeing an old warrior family demonstrate their “art”.

“I wonder how much Harashi would enjoy this.” Kawasuki thought to himself.

The class entered the dojo, it was a lot bigger than Kawasuki thought, and they all took a seat.

“Greetings, my name is Ishiro,” said a tall, slightly muscular middle aged man in what could only be described as traditional robes, “I am the head of this warrior clan. Due to the fact that our family was created to be kept secret, only our members and close confidantes of what our actual name is. But what I can tell you is that we are experts with the blade. This is my daughter, Tsuri.”

A teenage girl also in tradition robes stood up among the 9 students. The girl had long pale blue hair and crimson red eyes.

“That’s strange,” Kawasuki thought. He thought that she could have dyed her hair, but her red eyes couldn’t be real, they had to be some kind of contacts or some optical illusion. Kawasuki was unsure as to why he thought so much about these red eyes, perhaps it could be since he had never seen natural red eyes before.

“She is my top student,” Ishiro continued, “and next in line to be head of the family. All of these students have the potential to learn our secret technique which has made our family so infamous. They have been selected from around the world to come and learn it in order to pass this technique down for generations to come.”

“Well this is boring as all hell,” Kawasaki thought to himself.

“Anyways, enough of that. I know you want to see some action!” exclaims Ichiro.

“Yagi, Ogata, stand and draw!” he commanded his disciples. “Ogata, position 3. Yagi, position 8!”

The two students both drew their swords and held them in different positions and rapidly began to trade blows with one another.

“Their speed is incredible!” Kawasaki thought, “but I bet I could shoot em’ dead if I tried.”

The sparring students bored Kawasuki,, and with his lack of sleep from the night prior he began to drift off

The two previous students finished and sat back down.

“Tsuri, Emiko, stand up and draw!” Ishiro said. “Attention, all of you are about to witness my two most advanced students. They are both truly prodigies if I’ve ever seen them!”

The blue haired girl stands up along with another girl with short blond hair and a red scarf.

“Too bad we have to hold back, I would love to settle our little dispute,” thought Tsuri, who had to maintain a professional exterior during this demonstration.

Tsuri and Emiko had been learning together since they were very young and had developed a friendly rivalry between each other. They always wanted to properly settle it but never went all out for fear of accidentally killing each other.

Emiko had a little smirk on her face as they both pulled out their wooden training swords.

Emiko began swinging while Tsuri took the defensive.

Tsuri knew that Emiko was planning on starting offensively, and prepared as such.

Tsuri waited until Emiko had an opening and attempted to strike her leg but Emiko quickly blocked it. Tsuri followed up by trying to strike Emiko’s head but she was quick enough to block it as well. This strike pushed Emiko back a little which gave Tsuri an opening. Emiko raised her sword to meet Tsuri’s, and they began to struggle with one sword to another. Emiko smirked and quickly pulled back her sword and swung it at Tsuri. She wasn’t quick enough to dodge it and was struck on the head.

The two girls put their swords away and walked to opposing ends of the sparring ring, bowing before sitting down once more.

Kawasuki woke up right as the presentation ended. Ishiro was giving his closing statement, still as boring to Kawasuki as the previous speech.

“Would you mind hurrying up and finishing?” Kawasuki thought to himself.

A mere few minutes later, Kawasuki found himself free from this boring purgatory he was trapped in. Though he thought seeing swordsmen fight would be cool, it was all meaningless to him in the end.

Mr. Honda led all of the high school students to the bus. He stood in the front of the bus and said, “Well that was exciting, wasn’t it? Next we’re heading to a nearby rest stop so you can all use the bathroom.”

The drive to the rest stop was short; the bus drove next to the ocean, much to Kawasuki’s enjoyment. He looked up to the sky after admiring the glistening water, he saw what looked like an object crash down from the sky. “What could that have been?” Kawasuki thought to himself. No one else saw it so he paid it no mind.

They arrived at the rest stop, Kawasuki grabbed his backpack with his valuables, so nobody would mess with it, before entering the bathroom.

By the time he got out of the bus, a line formed to enter the rest stop bathroom.

Kawasuki groaned, he was at the back of the line and so would arrive back at the bus last. Despite the fact that he would be back at the bus eventually, Mr. Honda would surely be mad at how long he took.

Kawasuki was forced to wait for at least ten minutes before finally entering the bathroom.

Everyone had already gotten back to the bus before he finished with the urinal. After he washed his hands he looked in the mirror. Kawasuki looked at his dark brown hair and thought about the girl with the blue hair from back at the dojo. “My hair has such a boring color, I should dye it when I get home. Normal colored hair is for boring people, and I don’t want to be boring.”

As Kawasuki was walking out of the bathroom, he heard several loud explosive crashes nearby and ran outside to see several craters near the parking lot. He got out into the blinding light of the sun just in time to see a large object rain down from the sky and hit his bus, causing it to explode.

“Oh my god, they’re all dead.” So many thoughts were racing through Kawasuki’s mind, but he had little time to mourn, seeing as several creatures resembling deformed, misshapen humans emerged from a spherical object which sat in a crater where the bus once was. That was when Kawasuki Seshita knew that he was in for the fight of his life.